FATUM PRAEDICO
by Vanessa Sgroi
Summary: A tag/alternate ending to "Malleus Maleficarum". Ruby's words cause some fallout for Dean. Rated T for some swearing toward the end. Sam has a little rant.


**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything related to Supernatural. I only wish I was so lucky.

I just had to add a scene or two to the end of Malleus Maleficarum. So here's my take. Hope everyone enjoys.

Fatum Praedico Destiny Foretold

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FATUM PRAEDICO 

_**A Tag/Alternate Ending to **__**Malleus Maleficarum**_

By: Vanessa Sgroi

_Sooner or later, hell will burn away your humanity._

Ruby's words were an overwhelming static white noise drowning out all else. Dean returned to their room at the Conquistador Motel in a fog. He shut the door behind him with a quiet thud and walked toward his bed, skirting the chrome-and-red 60s style table where his brother sat staring intently at the computer. As he passed, Dean shed his jacket, dropping it mindlessly on the back a chair along the way.

Sam looked up from his laptop, a puzzled look on his weary face when he noticed his brother's hands were empty. "Hey, where are the sodas? Didn't you say you were getting us something to drink?"

Still distracted, Dean murmured, "What?"

"Sodas. You went out to get a couple of cans from the vending machine. Remember?"

"Oh . . . uh . . . yeah, they're in my jacket pockets."

"Oookay. Good place for 'em," grumbled Sam, as he pushed the computer away and rose from the red vinyl chair. It was then the younger Winchester noticed how pale and shaky—how off—his brother looked. Considering what they'd both just been through with the witches and that freakin' super-demon, it was obviously understandable—Sam had plenty of major aches and pains of his own—but it didn't make it any less worrisome. "Hey, are you okay, man? Did something happen while you were outside?"

Dean dropped down and sat on the edge of his bed, leaning over to unlace his boots. "Huh?" He grunted but didn't look up.

Sam growled in frustration. "Dude, are you okay?"

"Uh . . . yeah," Dean took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No. No, I . . . I'm just still hurting from earlier I guess . . ."

The taller man frowned in concern when he saw Dean rub a hand over his chest. "Think you need to see someone? I mean, we can find some clinic somewhere . . ." Given the reality of their plight, it was more of a moot suggestion, but if his brother needed medical help, Sam was determined to get him some any way he had to.

Still not looking up, Dean pried off his boots and yanked off his socks, replying, "Uh uh. I'm . . . I'm just gonna go to bed." The older hunter stood and stripped off his jeans, leaving them lay in a denim puddle where they fell. His long-sleeved shirt joined the jeans on the floor a second later.

Sam glanced at his watch, noting it was only 8:30 in the evening, as Dean slid beneath the covers and turned his back to the room. Since he was hurting too, the painkillers he downed earlier hardly making a beneficial dent in his misery, the younger Winchester decided stretching out on the bed sounded pretty good despite the early hour. He quickly powered down the laptop, grabbed one of the sodas from Dean's jacket pocket, and shut off all but one small light. After disrobing and getting as comfortable as he could on his own bed, Sam flipped on the television and leaned back against the headboard, sipping at the cool liquid while he tried to find something halfway interesting on the tube. All the while, he kept an ear attentively attuned to his brother in the next bed, soon hearing Dean's breathing drop into the rhythmic inhale and exhale of sleep.

_(SN) (SN) (SN)_

_Dean was falling. Falling into forever. The frantic swirls and curls of color assaulting his vision gradually darkened as the speed and velocity of his descent increased. Eventually the colors were absorbed into solid, infinite black—an impenetrable darkness that eventually absorbed him as well._

_It was the gravelly susurration that brought the hunter to full, unwelcome, awareness. The incessant murmuring—guttural and coarse—seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Dean's eyes snapped open and he gasped, instinctively recoiling from both the sulfuric stench burning his nostrils and the fiendish horde that greeted him._

_He stood naked, exposed and vulnerable, amidst the crowd in a dark, cavernous space. One lit only by a dim and eerie reddish-orange glow that seemed to emanate from the very walls themselves. _

_On legs that threatened to buckle, Dean spun in a slow circle. He was alone in the middle, surrounded by a ring of human forms—human forms with black eyes. As his own vision adjusted to the reddish near gloom, Dean saw that it was not just one ring, but thousands, millions—as far as his eye could see the circles went on _ad infinitum_. Each ring of demons stood just a little higher as if each subsequent circle stood on risers. Spectators in coliseum. Despite his fear, Dean still possessed his well-honed hunter's instinct and knowledge, and he immediately noticed that their eye colors changed the higher they stood. Those nearest him were the foul, oily black he'd come to know so well. Further up, Dean saw the glow of luminous silver eyes, then gleaming green, followed by the radiance of red, and eventually a few flickers of phosphorescent yellow. Beyond that, he couldn't see. Didn't have any desire to see._

_With a shudder, Dean realized that every single pair of those unnatural eyes was trained on him. Those who stood on the levels closest to him wore lascivious, lustful, greedy expressions. With blackened serpentine tongues, they licked their lips in anticipation. The demon horde pressed forward en masse. With each inch they moved, the already fiery heat of the cavern grew to epic proportions. Gasping, Dean sank to his knees and then dropped forward onto his hands. Shrieking and trilling in wicked victory, the demons descended upon Dean—the press of their bodies suffocating him. Without breath to scream, he moaned. And then . . . then the real pain started. Forget suffocation—they were devouring him—devouring everything good and right—everything human. And suddenly he found a breath—one last breath to scream._

_(SN) (SN) (SN)_

Dean jerked upright in bed, the echo of his scream still bouncing from corner to corner in the dingy room. Choking and coughing, he shoved away the blankets and rolled from the bed to the floor, ignoring the hard impact as he began to heave. Again and again his stomach contracted viciously, and he hacked up everything he'd recently and maybe not so recently, consumed—including some of the brackish, brown-gray, tasted-like-ass mystery liquid Ruby had forced on him earlier. A few seconds later, he felt a strong, supportive hand on the back of his neck.

Sam dropped to his knees next to his brother and reached out a hand, appalled when he felt the phenomenal amount heat radiating from Dean's body. "Geez, Dean, you're burning up, man." As Sam waited for his brother's stomach to quit convulsing, he noticed that Dean's skin had a pinkish cast to it—almost has if he had minor sunburn.

_Hmm, that's weird._

After another minute, Dean's stomach started to calm and his aggressive heaving drew to a close. To Sam's surprise, the pink hue, along with the fiery heat he felt beneath his palm, also dissipated as his brother's body quieted.

_Okay, even weirder._

Averting his eyes from the undeniably gross mess on the carpet for now, Sam closed his hands around his brother's shoulders. "C'mon, let's get you back to bed."

Claustrophobia hit with a mighty fist. Dean suddenly felt the walls of the motel room cave in on him, constricting his lungs. The hands on his shoulders became cruel restraints. With a muted grunt, he surged forward on his hands and knees, determined—desperate—to move. To get out. To get away.

_Out—out—out—out—out._

"Dean, what the hell?" Sam tightened his hold, not sure what was happening.

The older hunter continued his frantic crawl, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the worn carpet. A despondent mewling sound tumbled from his lips in between harsh pants.

Not releasing his grip, Sam positioned himself in front of his brother. "Hey, hey—c'mon, it's okay. You're okay."

Dean pushed forward with manic strength, stumbling partway to his feet and blindly straight-arming his brother aside, heedless of Sam's gasp of pain when his sore back connected with the floor. The older Winchester wrenched the door open so hard it banged into the wall, the handle leaving a nice round hole in the drywall, before its momentum sent it thudding closed after his escape.

The young hunter stopped just outside the door, the panicky feeling—the overwhelming claustrophobia—receding as soon as he saw the endless night sky and felt the cool, fresh air against his skin. Grateful, Dean leaned against the motel's façade and then slowly slid down until he was seated on the cold concrete. He pulled his knees to his chest and rested his forehead on them as he worked to bring his breathing back under control. The click-squeak of the door opening alerted him he was no longer alone.

Sam exited the motel room at a run, skidding to a relieved stop when he saw Dean seated—almost curled up—just outside their door. He sat down next to his brother's trembling body, close enough so that they're shoulders were touching.

"So . . . wanna tell me what's wrong? What that was all about?"

Dean's breath hitched, but he remained mute, pressing his forehead harder into his knees.

"Dean?"

Releasing an unsteady sigh, Dean murmured, "No. No, I don't wanna tell you. Not really."

Before he could help it, frustration and worry boiled over and got the better of Sam's tongue. He exploded. "Oh, that's right, how the hell could I forget! Everything's fine—just fine—right? Christ, I should have known better than to even ask. I fucking wake up to you screaming, puking your guts out, when I touch you it feels like you're on fire, and then you have some goddamn scary-assed panic attack or whatever the hell that was—but you're fine. Always fucking fine, as usual." The taller man started to stand, preparing to stalk away with resolute annoyance. Before he could gain his feet, however, he felt a hand close around his arm in almost a death grip, fingers digging painfully deep.

"Don't. Don't go. Please." The choked plea tore past Dean's lips as he looked Sam.

"Dean, damn it, I can't do this anymore. I just can't. Not . . . not if you won't . . . if you refuse . . ."

The shaking fingers on his arm tightened even further. "Sam . . . Sammy . . . I meant I don't _want_ to tell you . . . but I will. I will. Just . . . not right this second. Please."

Sam allowed himself to relax, and he settled once more back against the building. There was a different note in Dean's tone—an earnest, if reluctant, promise. "All right. I can wait." _I just can't stand to see you hurting, Dean. God, it tears me up inside_. "Are you feeling better?"

"Mouth tastes like ass again," Dean muttered, "But, yeah, I don't feel like hurling everything up from my very toes or hacking up a lung anymore."

The brothers sat quietly for several minutes.

"Hey, Dean," murmured Sam.

"Yeah?"

"You think we can go back inside now? 'Cause, dude, I'm cold. And I gotta say, I'm not really crazy about sitting outside in my underwear. Definitely not liking that so much."

"Prude."

Dean's soft chuckle brought a huge grin to Sammy's face as he stood and offered his brother a hand up.

"Exhibitionist."

_**FINI**_


End file.
